‘The Daily Show’ Fact-Checks GOP Debate Candidate Claims

Many late-night shows dove into Tuesday’s GOP debate the next night; The Daily Show did it best. In an election-cycle segment called What The Actual Fact? the program showcased correspondent Desi Lydic fact-checking the Fox Business Network debate watched by nearly 14M.

Ben Carson, when asked if he’d be in favor of raising the minimum wage to $15/hr, said every time we raise the minimum wage the number of jobless people increases. Lydic tossed on the screen a study suggesting the opposite to be true. “I’m rating his statement as false or, as Ben Carson calls it, Autobiographical,” Lydic ruled.

Donald Trump said during the debate, “I got to know [Vladimir Putin] very well because we were both on 60 Minutes. We were stablemates and we did very well that night” in the ratings.

While calling it “cute” that Trump thinks he’s friends with Putin because they were on the same episode of the newsmag, Lydic pulled back the showbiz curtain to explain the men were in two completely unrelated segments, shot in different cities, in different countries, on different continents.

Carly Fiorina, on the other hand, said during the debate she would not talk to Putin, even though she had met him “not in a greenroom” setting as Fiorina thought Trump had (apparently fooled by his “stablemate” gag), but “in a private meeting.”

That one was too easy, except maybe for debate moderators who must have missed NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the night Fiorina visited and said she’d met the Russian leader “in Beijing; we were in a sort of green room setting”.

“Ewww! Sorry Carly, that’s a video that actually exists,” Lydic said, showing it to viewers. And since it was such a weird thing to lie about, Lydic said, she was awarding the candidate The Rachel Dolezal.